


Breathe

by FlareWarrior



Category: Back to the Future (Movies), Back to the Future: The Game
Genre: 1931 Mammett, M/M, Sick Doc, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 13:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20874893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlareWarrior/pseuds/FlareWarrior
Summary: Marty'd reached the point that he had to keep a journal listing the places and years he'd visited to avoid running into himself, and even then the safest bet was usually to avoid the twentieth century altogether. At some point in all that travelling, he thought he should have picked up at least a basic understanding of modern medicine, but again, he wasn't the doc.





	Breathe

Marty'd reached the point that he had to keep a journal listing the places and years he'd visited to avoid running into himself, and even then the safest bet was usually to avoid the twentieth century altogether. At some point in all that travelling, he thought he should have picked up at least a basic understanding of modern medicine, but again, he wasn't the doc.

The doc, as it happened, was a flickering phantom last he'd seen, because Marty was an idiot and had thought it would be a good idea to go swimming in the town lake where, apparently, you could pick up typhoid fever if you weren't vaccinated. Luckily, Marty was. Emmett L. Brown (18) was not.

They'd made it a full three days before Doc had started to fade out. Those three days were spent in an alternate 1981, where the world was dust-barren and ruled by biker gangs, so Marty had crashed into Emmett's room a grubby wreck, but one who, at the very least, looked amazing in a leather trench and fingerless gloves. Not that Emmett had the ability to appreciate it.

Marty (long since sans leather, though the coat had migrated onto Emmett's blanket pile at some point) patted Emmett's forehead down with a damp cloth, four days on with no sign of the elder Brown - neither the version of the one buried in blankets nor his father, seeing as one possibly didn't exist anymore and the other had chosen to vacation with his wife back in Germany.

"I sent for your parents," Marty said, possibly not for the first time, as he slipped a hand under Emmett's shoulders to lift him up enough off his nice, four-poster bed to drink. "Never thought I'd miss American Airlines."

Emmett's red hair was dark with sweat, his complexion growing impossibly paler as the days wore on and his fever climbed. Still, he managed to look contrite at Marty's words.

"I do hate to interrupt them." He took a breath with some difficulty. "They've been planning this for ages..."

"Don't you dare feel bad. It's my fault you're-" _dying_.

Marty couldn't finish his sentence. It was hard enough living with the finished thought. He'd stopped worrying about getting stranded in time about twenty jumps ago, simply from desensitization, but losing Doc?

Emmett must have caught on to his thoughts at least partially, because he pushed the glass away so he could catch Marty's eye.

"Marty, it's alright," he said softly. "I'm the one who should have known better, not you." He took another difficult breath. "As long as you're here, it's alright."

Marty stared down at Emmett, who'd somehow ended up all but cradled to his chest, smiling weakly up at him after that lonely little gem of a confession, and felt something break in him. It was infuriating - he lived in a time where this disease was all but eradicated, and somehow he still couldn't do a damn thing in the face of it. He was going to lose this perfect universal constant over some godforsaken dirty lake water.

Marty set the glass aside and used his now-free hand to cradle the back of Emmett's head, so when he leaned down and captured his lips in searing kiss Emmett had some support.

For half a second Emmett was still, then he gasped and Marty would have seized the opportunity had Emmett not immediately started talking.

"Don't, Marty you'll get sick-"

"I can't catch it," Marty said sternly, and tightened his hold to draw Emmett in again.

This time he only curled his fingers weakly into Marty's dusty alt-80s t-shirt and let himself be kissed.

If this was going to be the only time, Marty was determined to burn it into his memory, and make it worth burning. He wanted to lick into Emmett's mouth and taste every piece of him, but he had to be so, so careful, and it was nigh impossible to split his attention between _god yes _and the rise and fall of Emmett's chest. Still, once he'd started, Marty couldn't hold Emmett close enough, couldn't kiss him long enough.

Marty kissed him until he could feel the skin under his palm heating from things other than the fever and Emmett was shifting restlessly in his arms, but when he pulled away he knew not all of Emmett's gasping was from the kiss.

"Marty, Marty I don't know how-"

"Shhh, me neither." Marty didn't let go, instead drawing Emmett closer still and curling around him as much as his position would allow. "We'll figure it out when you get better. I'm not going to let you die, Emmett."

Emmett clung back with all his waning strength. The night wore on.

Emmett opened his eyes to find the sun already well into its trek across the sky. He was still bundled up in bed and every part of him was sore from however long he'd been there, but at least he could breathe.

Marty was nowhere in sight, which seemed, to the niggling voice that was his subconscious, to be as alarming and uncommon as gravity up and reversing. Luckily this was reduced to a general feeling of uneasiness that spurred Emmett to push himself up into a sitting position against the headboard.

By the time this surprisingly taxing venture had been completed, the door to the room swung inward and Marty's absence ended.

He stood in the doorway with a steaming bowl of something Emmett hoped dearly was food and a glass bottle of some clear, red-labeled soda.

"Emmett?" Marty asked.

Now that he looked, Marty was a wreck. He was still in the strange sleeveless shirt he'd barged in with, his hair was as much a mess as Emmett's (which, without electrical intervention, was difficult to achieve) and the circles under his eyes were so dark he might have believed they were coal smudges.

Before he could voice a word of concern, however, Marty was across the room, the dishes on the nightstand and he himself all but flung into Emmett's lap.

"Marty?" He managed at length, spoken mostly into Marty's shoulder since his arms were wrapped around Emmett's neck.

"Welcome back," Marty replied thickly.

Belatedly, Emmett raised his hands to return the embrace. He found himself mindlessly attempting to get Marty's disastrous hair under control a few seconds later, flushed, and drew back.

"Marty, have you slept-"

Marty mumbled in his sleep, what Emmett could only assume was an excuse that amounted to 'no.'

"And you thought _I_ was going to die?" he said fondly. "Clearly I can't leave you alone for very long."

He tucked Marty under a few of the loose blankets with what strength he could muster, then ate the soup and lime-flavored soda he'd brought. There was no way to know the date, but it seemed to be at least a few days from the last thing he could remember.

This was proven when he heard the front door open.

"Emmett?" His father boomed, what Emmett had come to recognize as worry coloring his voice.

"In here," he called weakly, which triggered a coughing fit that brought both his parents none the less.

"Oh, Emmett! You look terrible!" his mother cried upon seeing him. "When the doctor told us we might be too late..."

"We came as soon as we heard-" his father added, only to cut off as Emmett shushed them both. Instantly he felt sheepish, but his goal was achieved.

"He's only just fallen asleep," he explained lamely, gesturing to the bundle of blankets that was Marty.

"Is that Corleon?" his father asked, confusion and suspicion warring for dominance on his features. "He'd better be sick too, sleeping while you're-"

"I suspect he hasn't slept since the eighteenth, whenever that was," Emmett snapped. Never let it be said that he didn't still argue with his father, but he took a breath and let it go. "I'm terribly sorry to ruin your vacation," he said sincerely. "It seems I'll be alright. Marty took care of me."

His parents were quiet while they seemed to turn that over in their heads. His mother was the first to reanimate, wiping her eyes surreptitiously and coming to hug him tight.

"You're a mess, darling. Can you stand? I'll draw you a bath."

"I can damn well try," Emmett agreed, struggling to do just that.

Marty came around to the smell of wood smoke. It was a smell that set off a few alarms in his head. He set out in search of why, and came up with the idea that one was supposed to tend fires lest they go out of control and suffocate one in one’s sleep, and since he was just waking up and Emmett was-

"Emmett!" He shot upright, wild eyes searching the room desperately for any sign of the skinny young doctor and finding none. _Oh no_, he thought, _no no no_-

A rumbling voice by the fire interrupted his panic. "He's alright. His mother's coddling him downstairs."

What his blurry vision had mistaken for an armchair stood and turned to face him. Judge Brown was an intimidating man when Marty was fully-clothed and fully-conscious, and now he looked the part of a very big cartoon villain. It might have been the accent, though.

"He's okay?" Marty asked anyway, rubbing his eyes to hopefully see something less intimidating. It didn't work. "Are you sure? He should still be in bed, right?"

"He was in bed for eight days, wasn't he?"

Marty blinked, didn't know the answer, and shrugged nervously. "Ish?"

Rather than say, throw him into the fire, Marty found himself suddenly subjected to a crushing hug courtesy Emmett's bear of a father.

"What-Judge Brown?!" Marty squeaked.

"The doctor told us Emmett had hours left the last time he came here. I came back to _bury my son_, Corleon. You-being here, tending to him, you saved his life. I'm forever in your debt."

Marty was _not_ tearing up, no sir. Okay, maybe that was a lie, but Doc was going to be fine and would probably be around to collect him when the coast was clear and that was worth a little emotion.

"No debt, sir," Marty insisted. "As long as Emmett's okay, that's enough for me."

The judge drew back and wiped his cheeks without the shame Marty felt doing the same thing.

"I don't know how Emmett got a friend like you, Corleon, but he's done something right."

"Him?" Marty laughed, but was cut off when a woman's voice floated up the stairs.

"Darling, could you come down here for a spell?"

The judge excused himself, leaving Marty alone in the dim room.

"I'm still wondering what _I _did."

It was sitting there, watching the flames dance and waiting for the reflection of headlights on the window to turn into a flying car that Marty remembered his little lapse in judgement a week ago, when he'd been sure Emmett was going to die. Resignation washed over him along with the utter dread, which created a feeling he assumed was not unlike walking to the gallows. In short order, there was a tap on the window. Marty calmly slung his coat and gloves back on before making his way over, out the window and through the open passenger door into the DeLorean. In spite of all his pent-up fear, the sight of Doc, alive and tangible, did things to his heart.

"Doc, thank god-"

At least he hadn't messed everything up - Doc still dragged him across the center console into a tight embrace that Marty returned with enthusiasm. _This_ he could never build up a tolerance to, the heart-stopping terror of nearly losing Doc was almost worse in succession.

But Doc drew back frowning so hard it would have been comical, if Marty wasn't also concerned he might get booted out in whatever time Doc thought would be the least pleasant.

"What were you thinking, Marty?! 'I can't catch it'?!" Doc peeled off as much as the frictionless wheels would let him, punching in a seemingly random date in the year twenty-fifty. "I don't know what they fill your head with in that school of yours, but you should at least know that at your age you're just as susceptible to typhoid fever as I was."

"What?" Marty asked, then remembered saying that and when and turned red as a tomato. "Where, um, Doc, listen-"

"They have medicine in twenty-fifty that will stave off the worst of it. Typhoid fever has been wiped out, but they can treat the symptoms so you won't have to go through what I did."

"Doc!" Marty insisted. "I'd be sick by now if I had it, right? I'm fine, but - aren't you mad?"

"Absolutely. Endangering yourself like that and disappearing, though I suppose the disappearing was my fault..."

Doc continued muttering, and Marty found himself starting to smile a bit.

"So you're not going to strand me in twenty-fifty?"

Doc blinked at him, wild-eyed as usual, as though Marty was the one who was in danger of losing it. Then his look shifted to considering.

"No, I think not," He said as the speedometer neared eighty. "I'm sure you'd find trouble there too."

**Author's Note:**

> This is/was part of an adventure with those old 50 sentence prompt things from livejournal, in which I thought to myself, what if, instead of 50 sentences, I wrote 50 WHOLE FICS?! And proceeded to mash out 20k until midterms brutally murdered me. There are a few more done but they make much, much less sense because all the fics ended up connected (mad max alt 80s was one of them). On another note, I wrote this just before my Kingsman deep-dive. Emmett already has Harry voice.


End file.
